Sun Kissed

by Catherine Anderson

  Samantha decided that sounded really good. Almost as good as a rosary. Her eyes drifted shut. Blackness enveloped her. And somewhere in the shifting shadows, she heard Tucker’s voice.

  “I’ll take care of him, honey. Trust me.”

  Tucker couldn’t remember how the hell to say a Hail Mary. His mom had taught him the words in strict Irish Catholic fashion when he was just a little tyke, but his dad had never been much for organized worship, and over the years Tucker had taken Harv Coulter’s cue. He knew only the first few words of the prayer: “Hail Mary, full of grace.” And he knew the last few words: “Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.” The middle had gotten lost somewhere, and that irritated the hell out of him, because he never forgot anything.

  He settled for saying the parts of the prayer that he could remember. A promise was a promise, after all. He muttered the words over and over. “Hail Mary, full of grace,” as he went over lab reports. “Pray for us sinners,” as he drew blood from an equine possibly infected with the West Nile virus. “Now and at the hour of our death,” as he settled back in his desk chair with a much-needed cup of coffee. “Amen,” when Max lifted his massive head from his paws and went, “Woof!”

  “No barking in the clinic,” Tucker reminded the rottweiler. “You might scare the horses. You know the rules. If you can’t follow them, you’ll have to stay home next time.”

  Max groaned, lowered his head back to his paws, and sighed.

  Tucker sighed with him. Even with some sleep under his belt, he still felt fried. He took another sip of coffee and pushed at the papers on his desk. Then he muttered the prayer again, which earned him another bewildered look from his dog.

  “I’m not talking to myself. I’m praying. It’s a totally normal thing to do. Lots of people pray.” He tossed the canine a piece of chicken jerky from the treat canister to shut him up.

  A heavy weight anchored Samantha to the mattress, and someone was snoring to rattle the walls. As she came slowly awake, hot breath wafted over her cheek. It smelled faintly of halitosis and chicken, not a pleasant combination. She eased her head around and cracked open one eye to find a massive black head on the pillow next to hers. Struggling to focus, she made out floppy, rust-colored jowls and a lolling tongue flecked with dry drool. With a start, she realized she was nose to nose with a rottweiler.

  “Oh!” She jerked upright, gaping at the dog. “Where did you come from?”

  The huge beast merely yawned, licked his chops, and stretched out to take up the section of mattress she had just vacated.

  “Max!” Samantha turned to see Tucker standing just inside the stall entrance, a glower on his face. “You aren’t supposed to be in here.” He snapped his fingers at the ca nine. “Come on. Get down from there. What were you thinking?”

  The dog yawned again and groaned as he crawled slowly off the mattress, and then stuck one leg out behind him in a delicious stretch.

  “I’m sorry,” Tucker told her. “He knows better than to enter any of the stalls. I don’t know what got into him.”

  “It’s all right.” Tucker looked so discomfited that Samantha struggled not to smile. “My brother Quincy has two Australian shepherds. Tabasco is used to dogs.”

  “That doesn’t mean you are. I can’t believe he got in bed with you.” Tucker shoved the gate wide. “Out. Shame on you.”

  “Really, it wasn’t a problem.” Samantha pushed at her hair, almost smiling again when the rottweiler tried to tuck under a tail he didn’t possess to make a shamefaced exit. “How long have I been asleep?”

  “About six hours. Your entire family filed through here at different times this morning. It’s after noon.” He stepped over to place a stethoscope on Tabasco’s neck. After listening for a moment, he moved the chest piece to take the horse’s pulse. “Good news. He seems a little better.”

  “Do you think?” Samantha asked hopefully. She got up and stepped over to look at her horse. “Steadier on his feet, maybe.”

  “And he actually seemed hungry for his grain this morning,” Tucker added. His blue eyes met hers. “Honestly, it’s too early to tell much, one way or the other. After this crisis is over, it’ll be another two weeks, possibly three, before his blood panels will reveal any thing conclusive, good or bad.”

  Samantha’s heart caught. “And if they’re bad?”

  He scowled. “We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it.” Then, after hesitating for a moment, he added, “But my gut tells me we aren’t going to cross that bridge. I think he’s going to make it.”

  “Oh, I hope so. He’s a wonderful horse.”

  “I have nothing on which to base my optimism,” he re minded her.

  “Will he have to stay here the entire two to three weeks?” she asked.

  “That depends greatly on you. When I think he’s strong enough to be taken off the IV drip, he’ll need IV injections throughout the day. I’ll leave the catheter in, so they’ll be easy enough to give. If you’re comfortable doing that, I see no reason why he can’t go home. I can drive out to the ranch to draw blood so I can monitor how he’s coming along.”

  “I don’t have a problem giving IV injections.”

  “He may be ready to go home in a week or so then.” He stroked the stallion’s mane. “I prayed for him while you were asleep.”

  “You did?” A rush of pleasure moved through her. It touched her beyond measure to imagine a busy veterinarian saying prayers for her horse as he administered to other patients. It also filled her with hope. In her opinion, it wasn’t always possible for man or beast to be cured by science alone. “I appreciate that, Tucker. I truly do.”

  He grinned at her. “I can’t remember all of a Hail Mary, but I said the parts I know.”

  Samantha was fascinated in spite of herself. “Are you Catholic, then?”

  “My mother is. She didn’t practice for a long time, al though I believe she may be now. But she made sure all of us kids were baptized, and when we were little, she did her best to give us a rudimentary knowledge of her Irish Catholic faith.”

  Samantha studied him for a moment. “We’re Irish, too.”

  He glanced at her over Tabasco’s shoulder, his blue eyes dancing with mischief. “I ne’er would ha’ thought it,” he said with just enough of an Irish brogue to tell her someone in his family had spoken Gaelic. “In our family, the Irish runs strong on both sides. My grandpa McBride was born in the old country. When Isaiah and I were little, Grandpa would plant us, squirming and kicking, on his knees, hug us up close, and tell us stories about the wee folk.”

  “My dad’s parents were both born in Oregon, but they were Irish all the same, and raised in the Irish tradition.”

  He checked Tabasco’s IV. “The Irish are good, solid stock. Hardworking, and sometimes hard drinking, but I’ve never met an Irishman yet with a cold heart.”

  That was true in Samantha’s experience as well. Her grandpa Harrigan had loved his Irish whiskey, but even in his cups, he’d always had a gentle hand and a ready hug for his grandchildren.

  “I’m sorry about Max crawling in bed with you,” Tucker said, jerking her from her reverie. “I took him to dog obedience school, believe it or not.”

  He left that revelation hanging.

  “And did he learn a lot?” she couldn’t resist asking.

  Tucker’s dark face flushed slightly. “Yes, how to count. He totally ignores me until I say something three times.”

  The honest discomfiture in his expression made Samantha burst out laughing, a great, huge guffaw that came so hard and fast it embarrassed her. She liked this man. From the start, he’d had a way of working past her defenses, and the better she came to know him, the less inclined she felt to resist his relaxed, effortless charm.

  That made him ever so dangerous to her still-wounded heart, and she would do well to remember it.

  Over the next several days, Samantha came to realize there were certain things in life against which she was nearly in
capable of defending herself: kindness offered without any strings attached, dollops of humor tossed in to lighten her heart when she least expected it, and quiet strength when she needed support.

  Tucker Coulter offered her all three.

  He brought her fresh coffee whenever he was at the clinic, made strong, just the way she liked it. He ordered takeout for her, morning, noon, and night, refusing recompense even when she insisted on paying the tabs. He also made sure the clinic bathroom was kept stocked with fresh towels and washcloths so she could take regular showers. And during the rocky stages of Tabasco’s recovery, when Samantha felt sure the stallion might die and wanted only some privacy to cry, Tucker was there with a joke to make her laugh or a heartening prediction to rekindle her hope.

  “He can’t die,” he said one evening when a blood panel showed no improvement in the stallion’s kidney and liver counts. “I’ve worked too hard and said too many prayers, damn it. He just can’t die.”

  With that proclamation, he promptly began changing the horse’s medications, muttering the names of drugs Samantha had never heard of as he mixed what he called “a surefire cocktail” and gave it to her horse intravenously.

  “He isn’t going to die,” he told her again. “Trust me. It’s not happening.”

  And Samantha believed him, even though common sense told her that there were some things this side of heaven that all the medicine on earth couldn’t cure. Perhaps her confidence was inspired by her growing belief that Tucker Coulter was no ordinary vet. Each time he studied her horse, his eyes burned with determination, and she couldn’t count the times he brought thick tomes into the stall, sat on the straw, and pored over sections of text, trying to devise new treatment strategies. His dedication was truly amazing.

  “What is it you’re trying now?” she asked.

  He glanced up from the book he was scanning. “I’ve used all the tried-and-true chelating agents, so I decided it was time to start rolling the dice. I’m trying a drug that has been used on humans to good effect. I can’t find any documented findings on its success with horses, but I’m still looking, and either way, I think it’s worth a shot.”

  Her throat felt tight and itchy. “So the one you were using wasn’t working?”

  A deep line appeared between his thick, dark brows. “I can’t say it wasn’t working, just not as quickly as I’d like. I want to experiment. Are you game?”

  Samantha took a while to answer. What if this new drug wasn’t as effective as the one they’d been using up until now? She’d never been much of a gambler, and she was especially reluctant with Tabasco’s life hanging in the balance. But she’d come to believe in Tucker Coulter and in what he’d told her early on in their acquaintance: that he was a phenomenal equine specialist. If he thought a different drug might work better, she could be signing Tabasco’s death warrant if she withheld permission.

  “My horse is in your hands,” she managed to say. “If you think it’s time to roll the dice, then continue to roll them.”

  He held her gaze for a long moment. Then he nodded decisively. “I think it’s time.”

  Instead of going home that night, Tucker stayed at the clinic, grabbing catnaps on his reclining desk chair, but awakening every two hours on the dot to check Tabasco’s vitals or give him another dose of what Samantha prayed was a lifesaving concoction.

  Sometime the next afternoon, he sent samples of Tabasco’s blood off to a lab for analysis.

  “Yes!” she heard him yell at about seven that night. “Thank you, God!”

  Before Samantha could leave the stall to see what on earth Tucker was shouting about, he appeared at the gate. “I just got off the phone with a gal at Saint Matthew’s lab.” He gave her a thumbs-up. “His levels have improved. Not by much, but it’s been less than twenty-four hours since I started using the new drug.”

  Samantha’s heart lifted with joy. “Oh, how wonderful! That’s the best news I’ve had in a week!”

  “It’s a little early to celebrate too much,” he cautioned. “I can’t guarantee anything yet. But it’s a very good sign.”

  During the long, exhausting hours that followed, Samantha lost track of night and day. She dozed off and on, but never for long stretches at a time, and at some point she moved past exhausted numbness into survival mode, no longer noticing that her body ached and cried out for sleep. What she did notice was Tucker Coulter, veterinarian extraordinaire, who had taken to spending al most as much time at the clinic as she was, going home only to shower and change clothes.

  As a result, Max, the friendly rottweiler, who couldn’t be left at home unattended for so many hours, was always at the clinic with his master and took to sneaking into the stall to snooze on Samantha’s cot every chance he got. When she wanted to lie down herself, she had to make Max move over. He was a huge, sweet, and absurdly lovable animal whose only major fault was chicken breath, after all. So why not share?

  As three days mounted into four, and four became five, Samantha realized that she’d come to trust Tucker Coulter as much as she’d ever trusted anyone, including her father. The feeling frightened her and made her wonder if she’d lost her mind. But when she tried to steel her heart against him, she found it to be impossible. Even when he wasn’t physically present in the stall, she could hear his voice as he spoke to the other animals he treated, his tone always gentle and comforting, much as it was when he spoke to her.

  Several days after she’d taken up squatting rights at the clinic, Tucker appeared in the stall wearing riding boots, Wrangler jeans, a green plaid short-sleeved shirt, and a brown Stetson tipped low over his sky blue eyes. Accustomed to seeing him in a lab jacket, Samantha had almost forgotten how devastatingly sexy he looked in regular clothes.

  “You’re due for an outing,” he announced, his deep voice as rich and warm as fine Irish whiskey.

  “I am?”

  “You are.” He leaned a shoulder against the wall, crossed his ankles, and folded his arms, his relaxed posture at odds with the stubborn gleam in his eyes. “It’s been so long since you’ve been outdoors, you’re developing a case of prison pallor. You need a little sun and some fresh air—doctor’s orders.”

  Samantha knew an outing would do her a world of good, but she didn’t want to leave Tabasco. “You’re not a people doctor.”

  “True, but I own this joint. That gives me special license. You’re going for a ride with me and Max. The horse will be fine. Riley has promised to keep a close eye on him while we’re gone, no worries.”

  When she hesitated, he added, “Please? I just got a call from a very special client. He’s an old guy with five acres of patchy sod, two cows, three pigs, a flock of chickens, and an ancient gelding named Old Doc. The horse is eating dirt, and if my guess is right, he’s probably ingested foxtails like three other horses I’ve treated recently. If the foxtails have caused abscesses in his mouth or throat, I’ll have to anesthetize him to swab them out. John Sorenson is too old and feeble to be of much help, and I’m going to need assistance.”

  Samantha knew Tucker seldom required an extra pair of hands. Besides, if he truly needed help, which she doubted, he would ask one of his techs to go along. This was only a trumped-up excuse to get her outdoors for a while, nothing more. Nevertheless, how could she say no? He’d been there for Tabasco, and by extension for her, day after day and night after night, never complaining.

  A few minutes later Samantha was in Tucker’s Dodge, sandwiched between her chauffeur and Max, who crooked his front feet over the bottom edge of the open passenger window to enjoy the wind in his face. Every time Samantha looked in the dog’s direction, all she saw was the rust-colored heart shape on his butt.

  “Max has no modesty,” Tucker informed her. “If he farts—and he does that a lot—bury your nose in my shirt, or you’ll expire from the smell.”

  Samantha laughed in spite of herself. “With a vet as his owner, I’m surprised he’s flatulent. Have you tried putting him on a special diet?”


  Tucker flashed a mischievous grin at her. “Absolutely. Pizza, burritos, steaks, hamburgers, and fries. You name it; he gets it. I’m very good at lecturing my clients on proper diets for their pets, but I can’t quite bring myself to practice what I preach. Max has the pleading, abused-puppy-dog look perfected to a fine art.”

  Samantha almost laughed again. Tucker Coulter made her want to forget that she was a jaded divorcée who’d vowed never to trust another handsome man. She was enjoying the ride. The breeze coming in through the open windows created a fresh and clean whirlwind inside the cab that moved over her scalp and face in cool gusts and made her feel more alive than she had in days.

  Once at the north end of town, Tucker headed for the rural outskirts, where ranch and farmland replaced businesses and residential areas. Here the air smelled even cleaner, and Samantha drew in a huge breath, savoring the scents of alfalfa and grass hay.

  “Good?” Tucker asked.

  “Fabulous,” she admitted. “Thank you for inviting me.”

  A moment later Tucker slowed the Dodge and turned onto a long graveled driveway that led to a blue ranch rambler badly in need of fresh paint. Neglected flower beds overgrown with weeds told Samantha the gardening enthusiast who’d once tended the plants had either fallen ill or was no longer in residence.

  “Mae Sorenson passed away two years ago,” Tucker explained. “This was a showplace when she was alive. She grew the most gorgeous irises on record, and, oh, man, you should have seen her geraniums. Mine are pretty, but they’re nothing compared to hers.”

  Samantha glanced up in surprise. “You grow geraniums?”

  “Oh, yeah, and just about every other kind of flower you can name. I have a gorgeous English garden in my backyard, complete with white trellises and wrought-iron benches. Do you like clematis?”

  She had no idea what a clematis was. It sounded like a kinky sexual act. “I’m totally ignorant about flowers, I’m afraid. Are they pretty?”